Architects: Various Associates
Area: 536 m²
Year: 2023
Photographs: SFAP
Manufacturers: DONCHAMP 汤臣科技, YPG 艺品高, YSHX 永盛鸿星
Lead Architects: Qianyi Lin, Dongzi Yang
Category: Hospitality Architecture, Cultural Architecture, Interior Design
Design Team: Baizhen Pan, Liangji Lin, Bo Huang, Yue Zhang
Lighting Design: PUDI Lighting
Curtain Wall Design: SHENZHEN XINSHAN CURTAINWALL TECHNOLOGY CONSULTATION CO.LTD.
Decoration Design: Design Republic
Construction: Uconia
Clients: CR Land
City: Shenzhen
Country: China

The FUTURE CITY Exhibition Center, designed by Various Associates, reimagines one of Shenzhen’s most recognized urban landmarks, the Golden Business Center. Completed in 2023, the 536-square-meter project introduces a new layer of cultural programming while respecting the building’s symbolic golden identity. To integrate the addition seamlessly with its predecessor, the architects employed a perforated golden façade inspired by the city’s urban fabric, allowing light and shadow to animate the entrance passage. Inside, the design guides visitors through a sequence of contrasting environments, from dark and contemplative spaces that recount Shenzhen’s past to luminous and immersive rooms that project visions of the future. A suspended platform softens the impact of existing structural columns, while a courtyard at the heart of the center offers respite from the surrounding city. Through a careful balance of material, scale, and atmosphere, the exhibition center positions itself as a civic space that bridges history and imagination while reinforcing Luohu’s identity as a cultural and commercial hub.

This is an exhibition center for urban renewal design. Rather than being perceived as a commercial real estate exhibition space, we aimed to create a place where the community can feel hopeful about urban development. We incorporated elements evocative of the city—such as facades engraved with the city’s historical urban fabric, a gray-toned historical exhibition hall, and a future gallery with a dynamic gradient sky backdrop.
Interview with Qianyi Lin and Dongzi Yang of Various Associates

Future city exhibition center / various associates

The Golden Business Center, completed in 2003, was among the earliest markers of Shenzhen’s modern skyline. Its striking golden exterior became synonymous with the spirit of “Golden Luohu,” a district that embodied the city’s rapid economic and cultural ascent. When CR Land commissioned a new exhibition center within this building, the architects faced the dual responsibility of honoring the legacy of the original landmark while introducing a forward-looking space that could host exhibitions about the city’s past and future.

In addressing this challenge, Various Associates designed a façade that preserves the symbolic value of the golden hue while lending it new meaning. The nearly 30-meter-long cantilevered installation, produced through advanced casting techniques with acrylic and hollowed-out metal, presents itself as both architectural and artisanal. Without the use of visible screws, the façade becomes a seamless surface animated by perforations that allow sunlight to pass through in shifting patterns, transforming the entry sequence into a play of shadow and illumination.

The façade’s technical ambition is notable, as it stands as one of the largest acrylic castings of its kind in China. By pushing material limits, the architects combined resilience with visual delicacy, ensuring that the extended cantilever withstands wind and structural pressures while maintaining a sense of lightness. The result is a façade that is not merely decorative but integral to the building’s architectural narrative, mediating between solidity and transparency, permanence and transformation.

Once inside, visitors embark on a curated journey through different temporal landscapes. The first exhibition space is designed as a subdued environment where the city’s history is revealed through suspended images illuminated against a restrained, dark-toned setting. By deliberately minimizing visual noise, the architects heightened the emotional impact of archival imagery, encouraging visitors to reflect on Shenzhen’s formative years and the rapid transformations that defined its emergence as a global city.

The narrative then shifts to the future, where the atmosphere changes dramatically. Here, openness and luminosity take precedence. A gradient skyline backdrop frames architectural models, setting them against a seemingly infinite horizon. The room’s soft tonalities and dynamic transitions create an ethereal environment where imagination is foregrounded, inviting visitors to envision Shenzhen’s potential in the decades ahead. This duality of past and future underscores the exhibition center’s thematic core, making each gallery not only a space for display but also a medium for reflection and projection.

Structural constraints of the existing building required additional design ingenuity. Two prominent interior columns threatened to dominate the central space, but the architects introduced a suspended circular platform with a diameter of four meters to redirect attention and restore spatial balance. Transitions between galleries are articulated with varying spatial qualities, ensuring that visitors perceive each threshold as a moment of transformation. This rhythm of compression and release enhances the experiential quality of the exhibition.

The journey culminates in a courtyard that serves as a spatial and emotional release. Positioned as a counterpoint to the intensity of the exhibition halls, this outdoor space functions as an “urban living room.” Shielded from the bustle of Luohu, it introduces natural light, air, and greenery into the sequence, reconnecting visitors with the city in a more grounded way. In this progression from enclosed history to expansive vision and finally to a place of calm, the FUTURE CITY Exhibition Center offers a carefully orchestrated narrative of Shenzhen’s identity. It stands as a civic space where memory, imagination, and daily life intersect, reinforcing the role of architecture as a mediator between continuity and change.